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We were wrong about the effectiveness of President Obama’s turnout mechanism.

The simple fact is Republicans spent more and achieved less than Democrats in 2012.

This was not just a personal defeat for Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan.

We lost Senate seats we should have won in North Dakota and Montana.

We lost Senate seats we might have won in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Virginia, New Mexico, and Massachusetts.

We had two candidates throw away Senate seats in Indiana and Missouri.

In 2010, we had three candidates throw away Senate seats in Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada. Why have the Democrats not suffered similarly from candidate missteps (as in Massachusetts)?

We had a chance to pick up four governorships. We won one (North Carolina) and lost three (Montana, New Hampshire and Washington).

We lost a handful of congressional seats but did especially badly in the West.

State legislative results are still coming in but we clearly fell from the 2010 high water mark. After the extraordinary 2010 results of 680 additional elected Republican state legislators and 25 switches, the GOP had more state legislators than any time since 1925.

This was a party-wide defeat and should be thought of as a profound wake up call.

The voting population is different than Republican models.

The turnout mechanism is different than Republican models.

The communications systems (both macro and micro) are different than Republicans thought.

Some Republican analysts and strategists are rushing around with new explanations of what happened and what we must do.

The fact is less than an a week after the election they don’t know what happened and they can’t possibly know what we should do.

Some have suggested the changing demographics mean campaigns no longer matter.

Others have suggested we did the best we could.

Neither approach is right.

For the conservative movement and the Republican Party to succeed in the future (and while they are not identical the two are inextricably bound together) we will have to learn the lessons of 2012.

An intellectually honest and courageous Republican Party has nothing to fear from the current situation.

If we learn and implement the right lessons we will have a tremendous 2014.

If we then continue to implement the right lessons we will win the presidency in 2016.

If in that period we have developed a generation of activists and leaders who understand the modern world and understand modern politics and government we will earn the American people’s support for a generation of growth-oriented, solution-oriented, innovative government that combines the American Constitution and traditional principles of self government with 21st-century solutions to meet 21st-century challenges.

First, we must learn the facts of the 2012 election and the campaign which preceded it.

Then we must think through the lessons of the gaps between our pre-election understanding and the Election Day realities.

Only then can we develop a program for the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

This will be the work of six months not six days.

Remember that the next time you hear a discredited “expert” tell you their current glib explanation of the world they clearly don’t understand.

Newt Gingrich is the former speaker of the House of Representatives and a Republican candidate for president in 2012.

Why don't you *listen* to the voters instead of lecturing at them? If you keep telling people what to think instead of hearing what they are saying and what their needs are you will continue to lose elections.

Sosha Liz Um is a perfect example of the contempt that drives women voters away from the GOP. If you don't hear why controlling our fertility is so vital to women's education, employment and our families' economic security you will lose election after election.

I read the commentary of a lot of folks from both sides. Newt's commentary has always been interesting, even if unbelievable. His predictions before the election were in line with most other fringe conservative agitprops feeding off each others' blogs:

“I believe the minimum result will be 53-47 [percent] Romney, over 300 electoral votes, and the Republicans will pick up the Senate. I base that just on just years and years of experience.”

Now, Moon Station is predicting again, only this time he's predicting two years into the future. Overweening, brazen contempt for those of us who vote.

#2---For the first time ever, TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS WORKED! The wealthiest 1% Americans spent almost $1 billion of personal money on TV ads to defeat President Obama. This money, normally squirreled away overseas, instead stimulated the US economy!

#3---The Citizens United decision, where the Supreme Court declared “ALL THE FREE SPEECH MONEY CAN BUY,” led to Republicans picking their worst possible Presidential candidate!

#4---The Republican TAXCUT-AND-SPEND philosophy of the last 30 years won elections, but destroyed the conservative brand and left our country with massive debt!

America has now passed the tipping point. From here forward, 51%+ voters will elect representatives who will work to redistribute the perceived unfair wealth of others -- to their particular voting constituencies. Rather than create your own wealth as per the old American Dream, the new american dream is a fight at the trough over a fixed pie.

Blaming others for one's personal failures, fueled by a philosophy of envy and revenge at the highest levels of government will propel us toward some new morally tainted fantasy of economic equality. What's incredible is that the European model already showed us that future... Never-the-less, we will now race blindly toward it...

You think business owners will not react , that they exist in a vacuum, that they will quietly submit to punitive taxes and regulations? Businesses near the minimum (number of employees) for Obama care will drop and stay below that minimum. Some will pay the $2000/employee minimum penalty, but more likely, larger companies will go a 29 hour work week -- part timers need not be covered => under employment

And it gets worse.... It's not just healthcare. It's the hundreds of business regulations coming our way. The wealthy really don't need all this. If enterprise is to be punished, there will indeed be less of it. If investment income is deemed evil by the 51%, it will also be punished... And there will be less of that too.

And some, like me, still building and remodeling at 66 will say, "Ok, boys, as much as I love the work, the camaraderie of crew-life, the enterprise that has made me useful and which has defined my life for over 40 years... Good luck. Go home. I'm done."

rockribbed - See ya. Maybe one of the young guys on your former crew will build a business and show you how it's really done. My guess is he'll pay better and have more loyal workers than the one's your dumping just to satisfy your rabid Tea Party ideology.

Yes, all of the reasons Newt cites are true but he's missing the point just like all the other pundits. It's not how the message was delivered, it's the message that's the problem. The GOP has sold it's soul to the far right wing branch of the party that does not represent a majority of Americans. If this election didn't make that perfectly clear then the GOP is destined for failure.

Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party had better wake up and smell the coffee! There's no mystery as to why they lost and will continue to lose influence with the American body politic. Look no further than the national symbols of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. These two relentlessly spew their divisive ugliness day in and out with their 'us versus them,' brand of "Conservatism." No superficial conciliatory gesture toward Latinos via immigration reform is going to change the fact that Limbaugh and Hannity's incendiary rhetoric is viewed as hostile by ethnic minorities.

If the Republican Party tries the old divide and conquer tactic with Latinos and Blacks, they will fail miserably. One, there isn't a great deal of difference between Latinos and Blacks when it comes to politics and their respective collective aspirations. And two, while much has been made of the "new" largest minority, the fact is, a significant proportion of that large minority are African in origin. In other words, their origins go right back to the Trans Atlantic slave trade, just as African Americans do. And third and foremost is, implicit in all the hand-wringing and rhetoric about wooing Latino voters is the continued dismissal and relinquishing of African Americans to the Democratic Party. Why? Why is it that I've not heard one high-profile Republican explicitly say, 'we gotta get more African Americans in our party'? Why is the Republican Party giving up on the black vote? Are our suspicions true that you don't want us in your party? Well if you do, then speak out against the daily insults relentlessly spewed by Limbaugh and his ilk.

Obama is extremely popular among African Americans but he has four more years and that's it. No segment of the American body politic garners less for their voting loyalty than African Americans! Many of us are tired of our vote being taken for granted. If you take the time to determine where there is common ground and cease with the hostile rhetoric, we're here for the taking. But no self-respecting Black man or woman wants to be associated with a Party that has Rush Limbaugh as its chief opinion leader. And it's obvious Republicans are intimidated by and afraid of Limbaugh.

If Republicans begin to find some backbone and publicly and demonstrably speak out against Limbaugh and Hannity's blanket hostility -- or any other example of the same -- then you will see a warming up to their Party. Newt, look no further than yourself and the symbols of your party to find the source of your erosion. We've heard the expression, 'it's the economy, stupid.' Well, in this case, "it's your rhetoric, stupid." Stop the mindless and simplistic narrative that touts that Conservatives (Republicans) are self-reliant rugged individualists and Liberals (Democrats) are takers, on the public dole looking for a government handout.

If you really want to stop the bleeding, put as much distance between Rush Limbaugh and his ilk and your party as you can. Start right there!

Newt Gingrich really ought to go away and not darken the doorstep of politics and government again. He is a buffoon, a crank and a screwball rather than a policy genius and prophet. He is exactly the demographic profile that has put the Republican Party into a dark corner -- the angry, old white man whose best days and notions of what the United State is and should be are long in the past or hold to a past we've moved beyond.

If anything, Gingrich is as much responsible for his party and its candidate's defeat as any other single person. He drove their debate, their viewpoint and yes their ultimate candidate for president way over to the right edge of the world. Now he is surprised that a majority of Americans will not and have not followed? Wage up Newt, you are and deserve to be history.

And as others have said, it is not the way Republicans deliver their message, it is the message itself -- a message of narrow economic privilege, racial bias and animosity, gender bias and fear, mindless militarism, denial of science -- the whole of it. It doesn't sell no matter how it's packaged and it isn't going to sell, especially when the salesmen are people like Gingrich.

The Republican Party increasingly will be a no sale outside the south, a region where the Republicans made a bet that they could step into the shoes of Jim Crow Democrats and thereby gain a lock on the House of Representatives, a bet they are going to find turning into a losing proposition in the next decade in all but the heart of the old confederacy, including Newt Gingrich's Georgia.

As now constituted, the Republican Part is headed for history's ash heap or will survive only as a rump third party shed by its far right wing as it emerges as a separate national party.